Chapter 4 Veritas

Finally the walls of Veritas became visible in the distance. The city was a lot bigger than Lucky Meadow, but no way near as big as the cities she was used to on Earth. This city, though, had an enormous stone wall surrounding it. Even from this distance, it was clear that the whole city was made to be as defensive as possible.

It took the caravan another half an hour to finally arrive at the gates of the city. The guards here were a lot more on their toes compared to the ones in the village before. Sam saw eight guards that were checking every person coming into the city, as well as checking all the wagons for illegal goods. Another four guards were keeping an eye out for trouble from on top of the gate.

Eventually it was time for her to enter the city.

“What brings you to Veritas?” The guard checking her asked.

“I’m here to join the legion, sir.”

“Great, we can always use more members. The necromancers never let up the pressure on the border. If you want, I can have one of the men escort you to the recruiting office. There is one close to every gate.”

“That would be great, thank you.”

“No problem. But first I need to know more about you. Where do you come from, and what is your class and level? Please hold your hand against the truth stone while answering.”

When the guard was done with questioning her, she was escorted through the gate. After a minute the guard stopped in front of a modest building. On the outside nothing showed that this was a legion building.

Inside was a whole other story. Like she expected from a military building, there were banners. Only there were just two small ones behind the large desk. The rest of the walls were filled with planks with armor, weapons and mostly books. Behind the desk a female soldier sat writing numbers in a book.

The guard stopped in front of the desk and put his fist over his heart.

“Sir, this woman came through the gate just now and wants to join the legion as a recruit. I thought it best to bring her here immediately.”

“Thank you soldier, I will take it from here.”

Immediately the guard left, and left Sam to stand alone in front of the soldier.

“So you want to join the legion. My name is Sergeant Ricci, now tell me who you are and why you want to join.”

“Well, I’m not exactly native, ma’am. The legion seems to be the best place for me to survive, at least from the information I’ve gotten from a guard in the village of Lucky Meadow.”

“What do you mean by not being native? You’re from the kingdom of Sarton or something?”

“No, I mean that I’m not even from this world.”

“Explain.”

“Not much to tell. I remember having a few drinks with my friends, well maybe more than a few. Next thing I know is waking up in my bed, but in the middle of a forest. The only thing I had were my pajamas and the bedding. Once I got up I was attacked by a goblin, which told me I wasn’t on Earth anymore. I moved through the forest and eventually got to Lucky Meadow. That’s pretty much the story.”

“Right, and you think that I should believe that?”

“Well, the guard at the village used both a truth stone and a normal status stone. Then he also used an advanced status stone to verify my story. I guess you could do the same? Oh, and the guard actually gave me a letter of recommendation.”

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“Yes, that might be an option. First let me take a look at the letter.”

In the end it took almost an hour before the sergeant was finished interrogating her. She did accept Sam as a recruit for the legion. Now she only had to take her acceptance letter to the training facility which was at the center of the city.

Thankfully the sergeant had given her a map of the city. The reason that she was really glad she got that, was that there wasn’t a single straight road in the whole city. They had done everything possible to gain an edge on an attacker. This meant roads that had corners every hundred feet or so, so that there could be ambushes behind every corner. Also the buildings had heavy doors and no windows on the ground floor. This made it difficult to gain access to the buildings, and thus the flat roofs. On those roofs archers could be placed to rain down death from above. Attackers would incur massive losses from both the arrows and possible stones that could be thrown down. The defenders could use long planks to cross to a different building if the attackers would gain access to one building.

Another defensive feature of the city was the floorplan. Not only were there corners everywhere, but also the roads were planned to circle the city a few times before you could get to the center.

Eventually Sam managed to find the training facility. It was just like the sergeant had told, a huge walled complex with banners next to the entrance, guarded by a pair of legionnaires.

The entrance was on a large square, which also had a temple dedicated to several gods that she knew nothing about, an administrative building and last but not least a real palace.

The guards at the training complex only needed to see the papers she had gotten from the sergeant to let her in. They directed her towards the first building on the left, in which a scribe was busy doing some kind of paperwork.

“Sir, I’m reporting for duty.”

“Ah, a new recruit. You’re the fourth one this week. If you could hand me your acceptance letter, I'll assign you a bed.”

Sam did as she was told and waited while the scribe did his thing. After a few moments the scribe gave her a token and told her a room number where she was assigned a bed. He also told her to be at training field number 6 in twenty minutes where a trainer would test her.

Sam found her room easily enough. Her bed though, was not the only one there. There were twelve beds in the room, and none looked to be occupied. She found her own bed being the second one on the right. She dropped her bag on the bed, and immediately went to find the training field she was told to go to.

Rushing towards the training fields, which were located all around the main building, she eventually found the right one. Even though she hurried, she only just made it to the training field in time. There a man who looked closer to seven than six feet tall was waiting for her.

“Finally, you have to be the new recruit.” The man didn’t waste many words and immediately sent her to a group of eleven other people who were already doing pushups in the center of the field.

“Everyone, this is the newest and last member of your squad. From now on you will all eat, sleep, live and fight together. Now introduce yourselves before we start your real training.”

The eleven others in Sam’s squad were fighters Leophon, Erik, George, Deon and Lufir. The archers were Jasper, Tia, Steve and Zach. And lastly the mages Xanthe and Virgil. Which meant that the squad had six fighters, four archers and two mages. Which seemed pretty balanced according to Sam.

“Now that you know each other, I want to start with some one on one practice for the fighters, while the archers and mages start on their accuracy. Archers, go ahead and use the targets at the end of the field. Mages, you will use your main magic type on the targets right next to the archers. Don’t worry about the power of your spells, but do try to be fast and accurate.”

Next the trainer took the fighters to the side to get some leather armor on.

“Just like with the mages, you guys will use the weapon that you’re most comfortable with. I want to see how far along you guys are. From tomorrow on, you will use the weapons that we will hand to you.”

“Why would we use other weapons than those we’re comfortable with?” asked Deon.

“That’s because you won’t always stay a fighter. Now that you’re a legionnaire, you have to be able to fight with others, not just on your own. If you want to use a big ass warhammer, then you shouldn’t fight close to someone else. Eventually you may request something else if you want, but for now you will start by learning to work together with your squad. In about a year you can sit down with your squad to work on optimizing your teamwork, in which something like that might work. Maybe a last guard between the frontline and your archers and mages.”

A few minutes later Sam was standing in the middle of the field, decked out in leather armor and with a wooden knife. When she picked the knife, Leophon, who would be her first opponent, couldn’t help but laugh.

“A knife? What are you going to do with that, pick your teeth?”

“Well, I’ve only had four days of living in this world, so not a lot of time to make myself comfortable with this system thing. Not a lot of time to pick up a lot of skills you know, so I’ll just use what I have.”

“Enough talking, get to it!” The trainer didn’t have the patience to let Sam explain more, and Leophon apparently knew about this, because he didn’t let a moment pass before he attacked with his spear. She narrowly avoided the point, only to be hit with the other side. Leophon knew enough about using the two-handed spear to also use it as a staff. This gave him both range and flexibility.

A second attack was blocked with her knife, while immediately sidestepping to avoid the follow-up attack. It didn’t take long for her to be pushed back so fast that she was almost running backwards. A few moments later the duel was over due to her being pushed outside of the sparring ring.